CONCERNED residents claim an application for a huge rubbish dump next to their village is seriously flawed and littered with miscalculations.

CONCERNED residents claim an application for a huge rubbish dump next to their village is seriously flawed and littered with miscalculations.

The Haslington Landfill Action Group say a 127-acre tip for household rubbish on land just 500 metres outside the village boundary would have catastrophic results, putting excess strain on roads and causing dangerous traffic problems.

Group spokeswoman Lee Allen says she was shocked to find pages of errors in the plans, put before Cheshire County Council by the Waste Recycling Group (WRG).

She said: 'We have been through it with a fine tooth comb and they cannot even do their basic maths.

'They say 35 HGVs an hour would use the dump which they work out as a 3.5% increase, but we have used the same figures and it is actually a 77% increase in HGVs.

'That is a huge number and when you think they will be going at about 40mph. It is going to cause massive congestion. Even the council's traffic department agree with us that the roads in this area can not take it.'

The group are also concerned that slow moving traffic coming out of the tip on to the Bypass could cause accidents.

Mrs Allen added: 'We have worked out that a fully laden lorry will need a clear stretch of 300 metres to turn out of the tip on to the A534 safely, which is nearly impossible when you think of the traffic using it. It is an accident waiting to happen.

'The council spent &#xA3;3.5 million building the bypass to take traffic out of Haslington, but the dump will force vehicles back into the village making it a complete waste of money.

'There is a great deal in the application which has been glossed over and we are very concerned that we could be left with a legacy of problems for decades to come.

'We simply can not let it go ahead.' If it is successful, WRG will remove two million cubic metres of clay from the site and replace it with 3.2 million tonnes of rubbish over a 20-year period.

The application will go before Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council's development control committee on September 16. Planning officer Paul Ancell said: 'The borough council can not refuse the application as it is a county council matter. We understand the concerns of local residents and as a consultee we wish to make a carefully considered and robust response.'